


it's the only way (of getting out of here)

by nebulousviolet



Series: aftg character studies [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Homophobia, M/M, lowercase abuse, nicky hemmick character study, referenced assault and rape, referenced conversion therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 13:09:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulousviolet/pseuds/nebulousviolet
Summary: "“good!” erik replies, bright smile and enthusiastic tone so sincere nicky’s heart hurts. “i love it when people like my country. we’re the perfect example of a clean slate, a-’ he lapses into german momentarily, ‘second chance that learns from the mistakes of the past.”a second chance that learns from the mistakes of the past. how nicky wishes he had that."(nicky has always been very biblically inclined.)





	it's the only way (of getting out of here)

**Author's Note:**

> this is acc the most angst ive ever written since my pjo days all of you be proud ok.  
> title from modern way by the kaiser chiefs.  
> (also, im fully aware that i say nicky stays in berlin but then say hes in stuttgart at later points in the fic. thats not an inconsistency, i promise, i checked the books and erik originally was from berlin but they moved to stuttgart.)  
> i know literally nothing abt christianity despite going to church school for five years sorry  
> dedicated to my english teacher, who lets me write emo ballads and plot drafts in lessons and still gives me awards, and to hadia, who's my platonic soulmate and hypes up my work. also special mention to all my tumblr followers who put up with my shit regularly. half of them dont even like aftg and just got dragged into hell last week. sorry babes.

it starts like this: nicholas esteban hemmick, age seven and angry that he is not allowed to play out, sits on the steps of his front porch and watches the way the older boys in his neighborhood move, all bright smiles and boisterous laughter. a traitorous part of him wonders at the shadows cast on the limbs of these strangers, at their blinding grins, and nicky feels horror bubble up inside him as he runs back inside, childish tantrum forgotten.

instead, he sits in his room, looking at the pinned up bible verses surrounding him, and forces himself to think about pretty melissa davis in his sunday school instead, about her long red hair and big green eyes.

(it doesn’t work.)

*

and it ends like this: nicholas esteban hemmick, age twenty six and recent graduate, is on a flight to stuttgart with a smile on his face, a ring on his left hand and a book full of memories. he no longer reads the bible. there’s no longer a feeling of damnation in his heart when he notices the attractiveness of another man. he closes his eyes, counting down the hours until he is in germany, and is at peace.

when he lands, he throws himself into erik’s arms and tries not to cry, because he has waited for this for five years, except that’s a lie because nicholas esteban hemmick has wanted this since he was seven years old and sat on the front steps of house he is no longer welcome in.

(he cries anyway.)

*

nicky is seventeen and he sees it as a choice; stay in south carolina and attend therapy for the second time so he will become what his father wants, or go to germany and be free for just a year longer, deny himself the martyr card for just one last time.

he may be a christian, but all human beings were born sinful, and nicky chooses the selfish option.

(his parents do not know that the urges have not gone away, and they wave him off with proud smiles and a copy of the bible in his suitcase and he can feel fissures forming in the perfect plastic shell of a person he has created to fool them. perhaps if he'd pretended enough, he could’ve convinced himself too.)

 _this is childish_ , a voice in the back of his head hisses, unwelcome but one he has been taught to embrace and accept. nicholas esteban hemmick, age seventeen, leans back and gives in to it on the lonely flight across the world. he doesn’t realise he’s crying until he stops, leaving a trail of dried tear tracks on either cheek.

nicky thinks it’s awfully fitting, this broken quietness reflected physically on him.

*

it’s warm, in berlin, but not intolerable like it could be at home, nicky thinks. in the spring sunshine, he could almost forget the fact that this is all a temporary reprieve from the inevitable, the last stop of a marathon runner so close to the finish line. sometimes, he sits outside and thinks that time could halt like this, when the trees are blissfully green and the sky is storybook-picturesque and the dandelions look delicate, even for useless yellow weeds.

there’s another object in this tableau that makes nicky want to freeze the moment. but he dismisses the pretty german boy beside him as simply something stereotypical enough for his brain to compute it as idyllic. and it’s true, erik klose is strong, blond-haired and blue-eyed with stubble that should look adolescent on a seventeen year old yet simply makes him appear even more handsome. he’s a perfect stereotype of a place like this, all outdoorsy and quiet.

“do you like it here?” erik asks one day, in soft, hesitant english. his accent is near-flawless but present enough for it to be endearing. (another play on the ideal german youth, nicky convinces himself haltingly.) “you’re pretty quiet.”

he’s not wrong, erik klose with the deep voice and the rock-hard muscles and the pretty periwinkle eyes. nicky has put so much effort in restraining a part of him he has branded ugly that he no longer has the energy to appear bright like he had in his childhood years. perhaps, he thinks, this is what reparative therapy is also meant to do. convert excess stamina into a resource for you to invest in your mind.

he bites his lip, looks down at the skin that belongs to his mother, the skin of whispered spanish lullabies and birthday cards from relatives he has never met. nicholas esteban hemmick is a patchwork quilt of identity, of a person, outside and in.

(the people at his church used to whisper, whisper about how luther hemmick was throwing away his good looks for some _charity case heathen_ , how his son didn’t look like him and what a waste of genetics. nicky is glad for this lack of resemblance in a way that tugs at his gut in an emotion that is the shadow of what should be guilt. if he had to name it, it would be relief.)

(perhaps he is a bad person after all.)

“i love it here,” he replies in german, wanting his accent to be as flawless as erik’s is in english. “i’m not a loud person, that’s all.”

this is the biggest lie nicky has ever told (apart from ‘i’m gay’), because in another life, 'nicholas esteban hemmick' were words used as a curse after he got particularly rambunctious in his front yard. in another life, nicky could chat a mile a minute and was always the talkative one, voted most likely to be chatting during class in elementary and middle school. in this one, he is the quietest kid in his grade, called ‘serious’ and ‘brooding’ by classmates and teachers.

“good!” erik replies, bright smile and enthusiastic tone so sincere nicky’s heart hurts. “i love it when people like my country. we’re the perfect example of a clean slate, a-’ he lapses into german momentarily, ‘second chance that learns from the mistakes of the past.”

a second chance that learns from the mistakes of the past. how nicky wishes he had that.

instead, he smiles back, a weak thing, fragile like the broken wings of a bird, or maybe an angel. his parents have ensured he is very biblically inclined.  
“you’re right,” nicky says. “you are.”

he doesn’t mean to do it, but maybe he isn’t talking about germany anymore.

*

he’s just twenty one when he gets the call; the cousins he barely know are without a legal guardian and underage. they’ve got perhaps a year of high school left and their mother is dead and they barely know one another despite being identical twins. and for nicholas esteban hemmick, who knows all too well the pain of being without a family or parents, the choice is deceptively simple.

“i won’t go if you don’t want me to,” he promises erik one night, just twenty one and sipping coffee that’s two parts bourbon with his head on his boyfriend’s lap. he’s not sure if it’s in english, german or some frankenstein concoction of the pair, but language doesn’t matter when they’re both fluent in either, and can speak in facial expressions anyway. the words are out of the blue, have nothing to do with the boring german documentary about cars neither of them are even pretending to watch anymore, but he knows erik will know what he means. there’s not much else he could be referring to, not now. “i’ll stay if you want. no harm done.”

except to aaron and andrew minyard, but nicky can be rather self-centred, a trait he is not exactly happy with, but does not feel overly guilty about. he has spent enough time and money on long distance calls to his parents in a futile effort for acceptance that he knows how to pick his battles.

“i’m not going to stop you,” erik says, after a moment. nicky’s not too sure what language this is in either. “but don’t feel like you have to do it, darling. you don’t owe them anything. don’t make yourself uncomfortable because you still feel guilty for the mess that’s your relationship with your parents. that wasn’t your fault then, and their predicament isn’t your fault now.” it’s funny how well erik knows him, nicky thinks, because this is exactly what fueled him to say yes in the first place. increasingly, however, it has become less and less about his father, much like the rest of his life. despite erik’s words, nicky _does_ owe them this. he owes them this year together, this year just to focus on things like high school.

“i know,” he replies, breathing in time with him. erik is all hard edges, yet never uncomfortable to lean on. there’s a metaphor in that somewhere. “thank you, though.”

nicky doesn't just mean for the inspirational talk. he means it for everything, though he’s thanked him for that before.

“welcome,” he returns, voice teasing in a way that brings out the barely-there german accent deliberately. “you better get me american clothes though.”  
“clothes?” nicky scoffs. “i’m not sure there’s much call for taste in south carolina, but i’ll try.”

*

there are many words to describe nicky, but stupid has never been one of them. he is eighteen and flying home for graduation, eighteen and nervous but expectant. there is a price to pay for happiness, and a price to pay for his parents’ approval. the cost is not the same, and unjustifiable for one of them.

if nicky were a lesser man, he would lie about the circumstances on which a return ticket to europe hangs on. if nicky were the person he was a year ago, he wouldn’t even have a return ticket in the first place. there are two nickys now, pre germany and post, and he knows which one he will leave behind.

hope, he thinks, is dangerous in ways that he cannot understand. there is no coming back from this. optimism can be a downfall in times like these.

(his heart still breaks a little when his mother comments on how good the summer sunshine has been to him, just before he tells them. it is the slurs and bible passages that are the hammer smashing down, though.)

*

it is erik’s eighteenth birthday. he’s a whole year older than nicky now, he teases, though there’s less than a month between them in reality. nicky doesn’t mind the ribbing. he likes hearing erik speak, likes how the curvature of his mouth changes expressively.

no, he thinks, disgust crawling within him once he realises why he enjoys it so much. _you need_ _to_ _stop_. this is what nicholas esteban hemmick has fought so hard against, this is back to square one after two years of therapy and conversion camps and whispered prayers. germany will not take this hard-won victory from him, even with its pretty boys and soft sunshine.

“we should celebrate,” erik announces, out of the blue while he does homework and nicky memorises homilies. “eighteen’s a big year. i can buy us vodka!”  
“i don’t drink hard stuff,” he says, almost apologetically. this is a lie, like many parts of him. nicky spends too much time getting acquainted with his father’s whiskey and brandy in his bedroom alone. “i’m not even meant to drink stuff like beer, but i think it’s easier to be forgiven for that than spirits. i mean, jesus drank wine, right?”

it’s the most he’s said to erik in one go, breathed fast like a sinner’s confession. nicky isn’t catholic, but he is familiar with the idea of letting your wrongs be forgiven. isn’t that what he prays for every night?

“i wouldn’t know,” erik admits, shutting his english textbook shut. “i’m atheist. but if you wanted to drink stuff like that, you should’ve said. it’s legal from sixteen here.”

nicky remembers his disbelief at finding out that not everybody was christian. he’d despised the idea of two thirds of the world going to hell. his father had said that the only way to guarantee them spots in heaven was to help them find god. nicky looks at the sharp line of erik’s jaw, and thinks that it is impossible for a being as lovely he to go to hell.

“no way,” he says, a little surprised at the idea of being able to drink so young. “in america, they can bust you for just drinking a spritzer if you’re under twenty-one.”  
“and they wonder why everyone gets blackout drunk in their college years,” erik mumbles in his native tongue. “hey, i can get us something for tomorrow. you in, nicky?”

nicky has never been a fan of his name. now he thinks he has changed his mind.

“even jesus has to let relax sometime,” he admits, and erik laughs, pink mouth loose and relaxed. his pulse mocks him.

(perhaps nicky is not that devout after all.)

*

they are having this argument again - it is three weeks before nicky flies back to collect his diploma, three weeks until he leaves germany and, by extension, erik. nicky wants to leave almost as much as he wants to step foot inside a conversion camp again, but _i want never_ _gets_.  
“you can’t go back into that house and pretend what they did to you is okay!” erik seethes. the closer his departure draws, the angrier he gets. “i saw you in that arrivals lounge, and you were crushed. you looked so sad and withdrawn i was convinced you were mourning somebody. and i was right. _you were fucking mourning yourself_. they don’t get to break you so bad again.”

his accent is thick, choked, as if coherent english is being blocked by emotion. in any other context, he would find this endearing.  
“they’re my parents,” nicky insists, sounding pathetic even to himself. “they did it out of love. they thought i’d be happier that way.”

“oh, _nicky_ ,” erik says softly, voice deceptively calm and gentle. “nicky, no.”

nicholas esteban hemmick lies a lot less these days. his morals used to be black and white, squares on a checkerboard of faith and law. now they blend into shades of grey, a monochrome lullaby to soothe his ailing heart. he does not know whether he was lying about being sent to the therapies and the camps and the support groups for reasons of pure intent, and perhaps that is the worst part.

“i don’t understand,” nicky whispers, a chant, a prayer, a hushed voice in confessional, the gasoline of who he used to be running dangerously close to flame. “i don’t understand, i don’t understand, i don’t understand.”

it’s only when he’s stopped shaking that he realises the words are spanish, the language of a long-gone girl who played in the streets of mexico with her siblings and fell in love with the charming american missionary. nicky is a man of god, through and through, from the bible on his bed to the failed attempts at healing him to his own existence.

hate the sin, love the sinner, after all. perhaps those words go both ways.

*

a quick family portrait;

“andrew,” nicky manages, voice cracking despite himself. “i-”  
“i’d do it again,” his cousin spits out, staring out of the car window at the courtroom. “and if you’d have tried to stop me, i would’ve knocked you out so i could do it anyway.”

aaron is not with them. when has he ever been?

*

they are eighteen, eighteen and sprawled in the kloses' back garden while erik’s parents are staying in munich and his siblings are asleep. erik coaxed him out with promises of beer, but they both know that is not why they sit, shivering a little, perched in greenery in the middle of the night.  
“it’s so quiet here,” nicky notes, hands shaking a little around a glazed glass bottle. he is not drunk, not even pleasantly buzzed, but it’s easy to get high on the sweet summer air and erik. “it’s weird. everyone keeps to themselves.”  
erik laughs, a sound that will play as nicky marches through the gates to hell, and leans back, flopping against the ground. his cheeks are flushed from the gentle chill in the air and the alcohol, and he is michelangelo’s art on the sistine chapel ceiling.  
“we’re not like americans,” he agrees, catching his breath. “we’re not interested in everybody else’s personal lives.”

what a strange concept. there is no-one in this country to ask about his therapy or his religion or his short-lived ‘heterosexuality’, and nobody would care anyway. isn’t this what nicky wants?  
he dares to make eye contact, aware that he probably looks strange like this, expression serious and quiet. germany has eased out the tenseness in him, made the tight coil of restraint in his stomach relax a little, but he is still wary.  
“personal,” he says slowly, the word like toffee oozing off his tongue. “like...like if they’re gay?”

it’s a ridiculous question, even more so because he’s speaking to _erik_ , erik who is quite possibly the most masculine person his age he’s ever met. nicholas esteban hemmick isn’t quite sure what he’s expecting, but it isn’t the softening of erik’s face, or him inching closer.  
“yeah,” he says, voice soft. “exactly.”

they’re so close their hands are nearly touching, erik’s calloused fingertips brushing against nicky’s bare wrist. his heart aches, and he forces himself to be still. he doesn’t want to want this. and yet he does anyway.  
“nicky,” erik says suddenly, swallowing and exhaling. “can i hold your hand?”

_leviticus 18:22._

“yes,” he manages, because this is a moment not meant for people like him, but like he knows, he is selfish. “yes, you can.”  
erik’s hand is cool and yet somehow warm at the same time, making his stomach swoop deceptively. they talk for a while longer, fingers entwined, until the subtle touches become kisses and they stumble inside, joined at hip and still holding hands.

(nicky thinks the whole thing is a dream, until he wakes up with hickeys on his neck and his back pressed against erik’s front.)

*

aaron’s court hearing is an _experience_.

nicky has always known aaron far better than andrew; he didn’t even know he existed until tilda’s death. that doesn’t mean he didn't suspect something as traumatic as what happened occurring. he has always wanted andrew to show a little humanity, but not like this. never like this.

his voice is solid till the end, never shaking once, even when he gets to the part about cass and drake spear. neil doesn’t look surprised - _figures_ , for andrew and neil have always known the most about each other - but he does look a little upset at the details, at the way andrew describes blood on the sheets and nails digging into his skin. nicky does not know what his face looks like, but he knows the taste of bile in his throat and the shake in his shoulders and _nicky has always felt too much_.

there is a running theme of violence in this family, nicky thinks. perhaps he will be the first to go down the peaceful route.

(andrew is too fond of his knives, his death threats, of neil most of all. and the reason any of them are here in the first place is because of aaron killing a man. aaron and andrew are two sides of the same coin, too similar and too different at the same time for them to come back from this.)

nicholas esteban hemmick sits in the gallery, choking back the tears, and he feels a sense of guilt. he could not have stopped the events of past, he knows. but isn’t he the one responsible for this trial?

self-indulgence has always been his greatest sin.

they leave the courthouse, aaron being acquitted within the hour, and neil slipping his hand in andrew’s does not go amiss. for once, nicky doesn’t comment. he has done his best. it is time to pass the baton.

*

“marry me,” erik says.

nicky is twenty one and hasn’t spoken to his father in three years. nicky is twenty one and sharing an apartment in stuttgart with his boyfriend and is happy. nicky has shed the hurt of a religion and a country, is working on shredding the hurt of his family, working on shredding the guilt he feels when he goes out to the local gay bar or passes a church. he’s doing okay.

“okay,” he says, and this is the first time he doesn’t feel longing for the parents who disowned him in a long while. “okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> please comment and kudos!! this is my first character study and im hoping to do my girls renee and allisom next. follow my tumblr for shitposts and not much else: @vvorkangelica


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